Sean Penn attacks the cult of celebrity as he promotes his new film This
Must Be The Place at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Sean Penn, who plays a rock musician who turns his back on stardom in This Must Be The Place, has launched a furious attack on the cult of celebrity in a speech at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Penn, whose film has its premiere at the Festival in Utah, said: "Turning one's back on stardom might be the highest form of common sense. One that I would aspire to be more complete with. I don't think it's an overstatement to say that it's an obscene disease of celebrity that's taken over far too much of the life that we do live. I think it's a disease. I think that it's diminished the quality of life. Not particularly for the people who are the focus of it, though that is clearly something that I've been compromised by. But for the culture at large, there is this kind of herd commitment . . . I think it's just become cheap."

The film, directed by Paolo Sorrentino, stars Penn as Cheyenne, a former pop icon whose look was inspired by Robert Smith of the Cure. The childlike Cheyenne has left behind the glamour of his old life and now lives quietly in Ireland with his firefighter wife, played by Frances McDormand.

After his father's death, lost soul Cheyenne embarks on a road trip across the United States to track down a former Nazi who brutalised his dad in a concentration camp.

• Neil Youngtalking about a new concert film, Neil Young Journeys, filmed by Jonathan Demme at Toronto's Massey Hall during the closing shows of Young's solo tour last year.

• Richard Gere's first visit to the Sundance Film Festival to premiere Arbitrage a thriller about the lure of money, which also stars Susan Sarandon, Nate Roth and Laetitia.

• Sigourney Weaver, the star of Alien and Ghostbusters, talked about her new film, Red Lights, in which she plays a sceptic whose life's work is debunking phony claims of the paranormal. The film from writer-director Rodrigo Cortes co-stars Robert De Niro, Cillian Murphy and Elizabeth Olsen.

• Sundance Institute founder Robert Redford lamenting the marketing and sales firms who hawk their wares around the Festival site. Redford said the success of the festival has attracted what he calls "leveragers", adding: "They come in with their own agendas to use the festival to piggyback their agendas," he said. "It's a free country and there's nothing we can do about that ... but we have to work harder and harder to point to the fact that this is about the filmmakers. This is about their work and showing their work to you."